[wakes up] [clown vanishes]
Sounds like the beginning of a Space Station 13 game. Just needs some distant honking.
What makes a great opening line?
111–120 of 202 posts
Re: What makes a great opening line?
#112I decided to read Lonesome Dove from the epigraph alone:
“All America lies at the end of the wilderness road, and our past is not a dead past, but still lives in us. Our forefathers had civilization inside themselves, the wild outside. We live in the civilization they created, but within us the wilderness still lingers. What they dreamed, we live, and what they lived, we dream.”
Re: What makes a great opening line?
#113A statement, not a question, offering more to the imagination, demands only curiosity and a little honesty.
Re: What makes a great opening line?
#114The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.
Perfect first line imo. Tells you the characters, the setting, and the plot.
Re: What makes a great opening line?
#115Re: What makes a great opening line?
#116"Longtemps, je me suis couche de bonne heure"* -- Proust, A la recherche du temps perdu. * For a long time, I would go to bed early.
And for a long time you'll be reading the rest of the book! I started reading it in jail, after reading 1Q84 which had a line stating that the only place you'll ever get enough time to read that book is in prison.
Apparently Proust's brother, a physician, thought that a long convalescence would do.
Re: What makes a great opening line?
#117“The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost, for none now live, will remember it.”
The actual opening line of Lord of the Rings is so disappointing and unremarkable though:
"When Mr Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton."
Re: What makes a great opening line?
#118>There was once a man who lived for a very long time; perhaps three thousand years, or perhaps a thousand million years, maybe a trillion or so, depending on how the scientists look at it.
>I have just been informed, that the debate over the question ‘is it right or wrong to have immortal souls’ has been finally brought to a conclusion.
>I was playing with my dog, Mark the brown Labrador, and I had forgotten that I was also playing with a dead man.
>I am forced to write to my neighbors about the beast.
You might be surprised these were generated by GPT-2 https://www.aiweirdness.com/how-to-begin-a-novel-19-11-19/.
Re: What makes a great opening line?
#119My favorite opening line in a book is from Peace by Gene Wolfe:
> The elm tree planted by Eleanor Bold, the judge’s daughter, fell last night.
It's very plain. The kind of sentence your eye just passes over while looking for something more obviously relevant. But the book itself is a mystery hidden in plain sight, and this mystery is both declared and resolved in the very first line of the book. That level of subtle, elegant engineering is what's so impressive about Wolfe, and what makes this book in particular so rewarding.
Re: What makes a great opening line?
#120[deleted]